


Laetitia's RuneScape Non-Fiction Archive

by Laetitia_Laetitii



Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Kindred Spirits, Meta, Writing, desperate times, headcanons, non-fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-23 03:23:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23004967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laetitia_Laetitii/pseuds/Laetitia_Laetitii
Summary: Content reviews, headcanons, analysis, writing, meta.Content: A Few Notes on Desperate Times, The Problem of Meg in Kindred Spirits
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	1. A Few Notes on Desperate Times

**Author's Note:**

> Since I've retired my blog and my DA, from now on I'll be posting all my Scape non-fiction here. I'll eventually also import here my hc posts from Tumblr.

I found Desperate Times to be a mixed bag. On the one hand, the gameplay was nicely varied — you travel all over the world, converse with various NPCs, and solve all manners of puzzles and riddles. The basic idea of the plot, “Kerapac tricks the player into helping him claim the Needle” is intriguing. But the execution of that idea, in terms of writing and characterisation, left me with little interest in where the plot is going. Here are my main complaints:

The first character I’d like to bring up is Thok. Thok, as everyone knows, has always been a comedic character — a simple, hard-headed warrior who dug his way to the bottom of Daemonheim with nothing but his fists. He’s not a smart bloke. He wasn’t one before, and he’s not one now, but there is a significant difference between the way he’s portrayed in the Fremennik Sagas versus how he’s treated here — this time he’s useless.

In the Fremennik Sagas, Thok punches his way through the Daemon Halls to help his injured brother. He saves the Divine Skinweaver from the Warped Gulega. He befriends a family of crabs. For all his flaws, it is clear that he’s a good man to have on your side. In Desperate times, on the other hand, he tags along when the player goes looking for the Needle, and then proceeds to do…nothing.

He’s not needed for combat, or heavy lifting, or his knowledge of Daemonheim. He does not notice anything. Nothing he does or says advances the plot. He’s here to be comic relief, standing around and making idiotic remarks in broken English. The joke is time and again the same, “Thok is stupid”, and it gets old fairly soon.

(One of the unique aspects of RS that exhilarates me as a player and makes me despair as a fan fic writer is the enormous range of style, tone, and genre of the content. The previous content Thok has appeared in has been comedic, and transferring a comedy character to serious content is always difficult. It failed in Kindred Spirits with Meg, and it fails here with Thok.)

The second character I’d like to bring up is Charos. First off, there is the matter of Reldo. Taking a long-established and well-known character and revealing him — with not a trace of foreshadowing — to actually be someone completely different is not a good writing choice. Unforeshadowed swerves like this erode a story’s internal consistency, which in turn discourages engagement and suspension of disbelief. Since Charos has been in the works for a while, a character who is revealed to be him could have been introduced in You Are It, which would have allowed him to enter the story without rewriting +10 years of lore.

(One could argue that Kochei-Kharshai is a precedent, but the situations do not look equal to me. Koshcei was established as a mysterious amnesiac with superhuman powers long before Koschei’s Troubles was released, which meant he had a spot open for a backstory. Kharshai was also mentioned by name in Zemouregal’s notes, which prompted players to speculate about the two being the same. With Reldo, we never had the faintest reason to doubt his identity.)

My second complaint with Charos has to do with his ability set. To cut it short, in terms of powers Charos is effectively a Mahjarrat. Practically immortal? Yes. Shapeshifter? Yes. Can do mind control? Yes. Well-informed to the point of near-omniscience? Yes. That’s a Mahjarrat.

Which brings me to my final point about the character: his similarities with Sliske. Like Sliske, Charos is a charming not-quite-a-psychopath and a master manipulator, but prone to explosive bouts of rage. He has a twisted creative streak. He likes to provoke people. The way he speaks to the player is near-identical too — jovial, overfamiliar, flirty, with twin undercurrents of both erotic tension and threat.

Take some of these lines from the quest:

 _“Reldo had his own life, his own hopes and dreams. He was a disguise, true, a mask. But I don't think that inherently makes him unreal. After all, we're all just masks really, aren't we?”_ (Talking about masks, in a quest where the player will shortly put on Sliske’s mask to become him.)

 _“But we don't yet know each other...intimately enough, for me to share the exact details. One day, perhaps, I'll sit you down and tell you all about it. But for now let's leave a little mystery in our relationship.”_ (Intimate. Mystery in our relationship. I love you for more than your soul.)

And according to the journal from You Are It, he’s a practical joker too, and a little bit off-centre in that special Sliske way. _“An idea for the Hunt grew. It started as a whim and grew into a compulsion. I couldn't have stopped it- there's no stopping me in that mood.”_

It does sound familiar.

Summa summarum, an established character is out of nowhere revealed to be a (technically) new, ridiculously overpowered character who without our knowing has a link to the main protagonist AND seems to be a bit of a carbon copy of a previous fan favourite. I come from a land called transformative fandom, and there we’ve got a name for something like this. It is one that in general gets tossed around too much, but I’m afraid it pretty much applies here.

And so, at the end of the quest we have “useless comic relief” Thok and "Sliske toned down slightly", plus the promise of another quest with them: _“Thok will help Crabloss and Player to hunt down this villain!”_ And while I’m interested in seeing in how Kerapac will proceed and where his character goes, I can’t say I’m too excited about the future.

To finish off, a few loose notes:

-I thought there was a major missed opportunity with Kerapac. Namely, with the fact _that Kerapac, a dragonkin who had recently been freed from aeons-long slavery to an elder artefact, instantly made use of his freedom by binding himself to an elder artefact, and this is no big deal._ There was no discussion of these parallels, no mention of hesitation, or of possible side effects. Some kind of foreshadowing of what he was about to do, no matter how cryptic — about the personal risk of what he’s about to do, or about doing voluntarily what he was once forced to do, or the elder gods’ habit of enslaving mortals with their artefacts, any of which could have been inserted into his flashback conversation with Vicendithas — would have improved the emotional impact of the scene. Even with Gail screaming “ _It serves the Elder Gods. I will not let the Needle be defiled by one of the bound ones!”_ there is no comment from him. Instead, it just goes unnoticed.

-Reheated Guthix angst. I like god lore, and I very much enjoy World Guardian’s Guthix-related anxieties, but I believe everything that needs to be said about it has been said for now.

-On the other hand, Kerapac’s remark about the World Guardian being a thing that should not exist might prove a way into something interesting.

-The beginning of a new series would be a fine time to let “Azzanadra is disappointed” rest in peace.

-I would very much like to learn more about Vicendithas. He has an ugly relationship with his father, clearly craves for something to love, and now is opposed to Kerapac’s plan. Let the player team up with Viccy.


	2. The Problem of Meg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few words about the way Meg was handled in Kindred Spirits

In the previous instalment in this collection, “A Few Notes on Desperate Times”, I touched upon the issues the vast range of style, tone, and genre in RuneScape’s content can create. Namely, I talked about the difficulties of transporting elements from comedic content to more serious stories, in that case Thok into the quest Desperate Times. In this entry I’m going to look at another instance of the same issue, the portrayal of Meg in Kindred Spirits.

I have no problem with Meg in her usual role. Based at the Player-owned Ports, she’s an incompetent wannabe adventurer who idolises the World Guardian and pesters them for advice. She’s a comedic character with her own comedic D&D, and it works.

It stops working, however, when she’s transported into a dark, serious piece of content but is still treated the same and portrayed at the same depth. The issue here is not the fact that she’s inept—she’s young, inexperienced, and completely unprepared; it is only logical that she’s out of her depth with Sliske—but the fact that when practically all the other characters are portrayed as complex and sympathetic, she alone remains a one-note joke.

During the quest we hear at great length about Major Rancour, her life and her struggles, and her bitterness about having her sacrifices looked over because of the World Guardian. We learn a bit about what kind of a person Linza is, her unscrupulous ambition, and where it landed her. Most of the Barrows brothers are given individual backstories and personalities. Even Sliske gains some new dimensions when the player reads his old notebooks. As for Meg? Nothing.

And this is where we run into a problem. Meg’s D&D—in which she asks the player for advice on everything from hunting landsharks to dealing with angry mobs—is light comedy, often absurd in tone, and it treats all its material the same. In that kind of a text her nervous, disorganised personality works as a source of humour. But in a more serious story, one that methodically invites us to engage and sympathise with its characters, her behaviour falls into a wholly different light.

When considered seriously, the way Meg acts —her nervousness and insecurity, her desire to prove herself, her need for attention and validation from her hero—have some disturbing and potentially tragic implications. She keeps messing up her sentences and correcting herself. She desperately wants to please the World Guardian. When her adventures fail, she apologises to the WG and blames herself. When things have gone well, she’s amazed “no one threw rocks at [her]”.

Now, Kindred Spirits would have been a great opportunity to explore Meg as a character. Who is she? Where does she come from? What drives her? But all throughout the quest, we get only get one line that lends any depth to her: She acknowledges her unusual behaviour “I tend to ask a lot of questions when I'm nervous. Like when I am around [Player name] I keep on asking them such stupid questions” and wishes aloud that someone would offer her “awesome power or cool weapons”. For the rest of the time—through torture, threats, and insults from Sliske, and especially when her fear causes her to blow the World Guardian’s cover—she’s played as comic relief.

In other words, the story encourages us to sympathise with all of its characters save for the most vulnerable one, whose helplessness and suffering is used as a source of humour. It doesn’t work.

_"I might be overreaching a bit with this adventure. See I've heard that there might be a secret dungeon in Morytania, one created by a powerful necromancer and - well - that means there might be dark secrets to uncover. So... I'm going to investigate. Any advice that will help me get back alive?"_


End file.
